Your heart is so important that worth your good care of keeping your heart suffer from any disease. Heart disease however is not always obvious and often there are no symptoms. But the good news is that heart disease is largely preventable. There is no single cause for heart disease, but there are risk factors that increase your chance of developing it.
Blood pressure
The World Health Organization rates hypertension (elevated blood pressure) as one of the most important causes of premature death worldwide. Blood pressure is simply the pressure that is caused when your heart pumps blood into the arteries. When your doctor is measuring your blood pressure, he or she is actually taking a measurement of the work that your heart has to do to pump the blood throughout your body. High blood pressure is defined as a systolic blood pressure at or above 140 mmHg and/or a diastolic blood pressure at or above 90 mmHg. Systolic blood pressure is the maximum pressure in the arteries when the heart contracts. Diastolic blood pressure is the minimum pressure in the arteries between the heart’s contractions.
Hypertension is a risk factor for coronary heart disease and the single most important risk factor for stroke. A good proportion of people with high blood pressure are unaware of the problem. It increases the risk of ischaemic strokes and hemorrhagic stroke. Hypertension stresses your body’s blood vessels, causing them to clog or weaken. Hypertension can lead to atherosclerosis and narrowing of the blood vessels making them more likely to block from blood clots or bits of fatty material breaking off from the lining of the blood vessel wall.